Mark wrote:
> And in relation to
> Pinter, I have found that the silences of a performance provide the
> moments during which the audience is most aware of their surroundings;
> coughs and whispers are audible from the auditorium...the theatricality
> of the event is at its most obvious...I'm trying to think this through to
> the possibility of a postmodern silence...any ideas?
Well, if we're going in this direction, then it becomes imperative to bring in
John Cage (-:)). So first of all, Cage wrote a book called "Silence".
Secondly, he wrote a piece of music called 4'33", in which no sound is
intentionally produced: the performer just sits at the piano (it could be
any other instrument) silently for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, letting
the natural sounds of the environment -- including the coughs and whispers
-- become the only audible sounds for the duration. Cage claimed that there
was no such thing as silence in the sense of complete absence of sound:
in an anechoic chamber, for instance, one hears, loudly and clearly and
continually, the sounds of one's heart and lungs. He said that the music he
liked best was the one we hear all the time, if we are quiet. Silences play
a very important part in his music: one might argue that the sounds
made intentionally in these pieces are just different framing devices for the
pieces' silences.
-m
> And in relation to
> Pinter, I have found that the silences of a performance provide the
> moments during which the audience is most aware of their surroundings;
> coughs and whispers are audible from the auditorium...the theatricality
> of the event is at its most obvious...I'm trying to think this through to
> the possibility of a postmodern silence...any ideas?
Well, if we're going in this direction, then it becomes imperative to bring in
John Cage (-:)). So first of all, Cage wrote a book called "Silence".
Secondly, he wrote a piece of music called 4'33", in which no sound is
intentionally produced: the performer just sits at the piano (it could be
any other instrument) silently for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, letting
the natural sounds of the environment -- including the coughs and whispers
-- become the only audible sounds for the duration. Cage claimed that there
was no such thing as silence in the sense of complete absence of sound:
in an anechoic chamber, for instance, one hears, loudly and clearly and
continually, the sounds of one's heart and lungs. He said that the music he
liked best was the one we hear all the time, if we are quiet. Silences play
a very important part in his music: one might argue that the sounds
made intentionally in these pieces are just different framing devices for the
pieces' silences.
-m